I have several friends who have gluten allergies so I’m always trying to find recipes they’ll be able to enjoy. I may have said this before, but when I first started baking gluten free baked goods it was really frustrating because I couldn’t find a lot of actual gluten free recipes so I was having to make adjustments to regular recipes to make them gluten free. That doesn’t always work and guessing on when a gluten free item is actually fully baked is kind of like a game to determine when it’s really done. Thankfully there are a lot more gluten free recipes easily available and I found this gluten free pumpkin muffins recipe while searching for fall-themed gluten free bakes. I love using King Arthur recipes because they’re easy to read, they’ve got a blog where they often post tips or steps on the recipe, and then they’ll list out substitutions as well.

The recipe isn’t difficult and this is actually pretty easy to throw together. I used canned pumpkin, but it might be fun to make your own pureed pumpkin (as listed in their tips section) if I made this again. Somehow while I was mixing the ingredients I missed the sugar part in step 3 and didn’t even realize it. Thankfully I was getting ready to scoop the mixture into the muffin cups and happened to taste some of the mixture and it tasted very natural. Normally that’s a good thing but something made me look back at the recipe and it was then I realized I almost left the sugar out altogether.

Note: We did not have any Xantham Gum in the house so I just left that out. Normally I wouldn’t recommend it since it can affect the outcome, but I honestly couldn’t remember if the gluten-free flour in our storage container was a mix that added it or not. Since I wasn’t sure I decided leaving it out might be better than having too much. In case you’re curious, here’s an article from King Arthur on Xantham Gum and why it’s used.

I made these to bring to work the next day, but I ate one soon after it came out of the oven and it was really good. Gluten free baked goods often taste a little chalky, but I didn’t notice it as much with this recipe. It had a really nice pumpkin flavor and wouldn’t been perfect with a cup of coffee!

Recipe Used: King Arthur